With General Conference coming up this weekend, Dr. Bill Smith and I speculate on some possible future revelations coming up! Would Official Declaration 3 deal with Gays?
GT: You mentioned a couple of things that were very interesting to me, especially in light of the Family Proclamation. D&C 132 is kind of the foundation for forever families. But you mentioned singles and you also mentioned gays. How do those relate to section 132?
Bill: Well I think that section 132 is by evidence, at least by internal evidence, it’s very much in the vein of thinking of sex as being in terms of heterosexual sex, of course not necessarily one-man and one-woman sex, but one-man, multiple-women. So, I think that’s the point of the revelation. It doesn’t really speak to the possibility of gay marriage. It doesn’t open that possibility at all. Whether that can be addressed in some other way, I don’t know, but the revelation, that’s not on anybody’s mind.
GT: Right. So, do you see that as being a possibility of a future revelation?
Bill: Anything is possible. I don’t know. Whether people would feel that there is dissonance with section 132 and any further revelation that expanded some kind of approval of gay relationships, gay marriage, I don’t know. That’s for another generation, I am guessing. But yes, that might be something that would be addressed. I don’t know.
Of course we do this in relation to Section 132 of the Doctrine & Covenants, which is one of Mormonism’s most important revelations: The New & Everlasting Covenant of marriage. Is there room in this revelation to accommodate gay marriage? In our next episode, Dr. Bill Smith will answer that question, and discuss how it might impact future revelations dealing with not only gays, but women as well.
Bill: Well there’s something of equal probability I think is that we have an official declaration that says that women can be ordained.
GT: Would that be more likely?
Bill: Boy I don’t really know. I think yes, it probably fits better with the current paradigm than say gay marriage would be, recognizing gay marriage.
.,.
GT: Do you see 132 being compatible with say female ordination?
Bill: Yeah, the polygamy parts seem to partake of the typical sort of patriarchal kinds of views of the 19th century, the 18th century and back. In terms of incompatibilities, that’s where that would lie. In terms of ordination practices, those kinds of things, I don’t see an incompatibility there, structure. I mean it would be easy to enfold women into priesthood structures if that was to take place. I don’t see a problem there. I don’t think it would be possible to stop that because you had the same kinds of issues with blacks and the priesthood when the ‘78 change was announced. They were very clear that this meant that there weren’t any restrictions on their participation in any way.
Is this Official Declaration 4? Check out our conversation…..
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Here are some others episodes you may be interested in.
093: Greg Prince on History of LDS Policy Toward Gays
092: How to Polygamists Feel about Gay Marriage? (Wilde)
048: What are the Theological Justifications of Polygamy? (Hales)
044: Does D&C 132 Conflict with Genesis? (Hales)
012: Kirtland Era Polygamy (Staker)
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